WASHINGTON – In tapping Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan to be his vice presidential running-mate, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has chosen an ambitious, self-described “young gun” who has staked his entire career on a single issue — slashing the federal budget.

Ryan, 42, has spent most of his adult life in Congress, with little business or executive experience to speak of.

He steadily built his credibility as a Washington insider, starting as an intern on Capitol Hill and then becoming an aide to a Republican senator from Wisconsin.

For the past 14 years, Ryan has served as a member of the House of Representatives.

“Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States, Paul Ryan,” a beaming Romney told the energized crowd in Norfolk, Virginia.

After he walked off stage, Romney’s wife Ann immediately told him he had made a mistake, prompting him to return to the podium to correct it.

“Every now and then I’m known to make a mistake. I did not make a mistake with this guy,” he said at Ryan’s side, then telling the crowd that the Wisconsin congressman was “going to be the next vice president of the United States.”

Apparently, the president-vice president slip-up is a fairly easy one to make.

During President Barack Obama’s first joint rally with Joe Biden in 2008, Obama told an Illinois crowd, “Let me introduce to you, the next president – the next vice president of the United States of America: Joe Biden.”

The Associated Press

The document, which he co-authored, showcased the small government, “opportunity society” that he had been advocating for years to smaller audiences.

It provided a national forum for promoting Ryan’s political agenda and made him a favorite of the anti-tax, limited-government Tea Party movement.

The manifesto also previewed the course he would steer when he became the chairman of the House Budget Committee in January, 2011, after his party scored historic gains in the 2010 elections and wrested control of the House from Democrats.

Hours after Romney’s announcement on Saturday, Tea Partiers’ reactions ranged from “Wow!” to “a step up from Romney” to “this doesn’t change a thing for me” – what one would expect from a notoriously fragmented coalition bound by a desire for smaller government.

Many hailed the selection of as a sign of fiscally conservative movement’s growing influence on the Republican Party platform. Others said it will not eradicate the enthusiasm deficit among conservatives that has dogged the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign.

“This absolutely brings excitement to the ticket,” said Debbie Dooley, co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party, who said she her reaction was “Wow!” when she heard the news. “This gives us something to vote for rather than voting against (incumbent Democratic U.S. President Barack) Obama.”

“Ryan has at least thought about the problems and come up with a workable solution,” said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, which trains Tea Party activists around the country. “He’s a good, articulate spokesman who will assuage the fears of many conservatives that Romney just doesn’t get it.”

But there were also plenty of reminders from Tea Party activists that this movement is not monolithic and that many conservatives remain suspicious of Romney. They take issue with his apparently shifting positions on gay marriage and abortion and a health care insurance reform he carried out in Massachusetts that inspired President Obama’s national reform.

Many conservatives say they simply do not believe Romney is one of them.

“Ryan is a step up from Romney, but that’s not saying much,” said Tina Dupont of the Tea Party of West Michigan. “It might help him win the election, but no one’s excited about Romney.”

Among the positive messages in online forums and Tea Party Facebook pages on Saturday, there were also plenty of references to Ryan’s less conservative votes. He supported the bank bailout in 2008, which is anathema to conservatives and has been a significant part of campaigns to unseat moderate Republican incumbents.

“Paul Ryan voted for many of the things that led to the creation of the Tea Party,” said Karen Hurd of the Virginia Tea Party Alliance, who said she does not support Romney.

“While the majority of the Tea Party will vote for Romney, I haven’t spent four years fighting Obama to get Obama Lite. This doesn’t change a thing for me.”

But other Tea Party activists who have remained deeply skeptical of Romney and still dislike him said the choice of Ryan would at least make them think again about voting for him in November.

Ryan’s budget-slashing agenda is one that Romney hopes will take him and Ryan to the White House in November’s elections, spurred by voter anger over a stubbornly weak U.S. economy.

Ryan also adds personal appeal to the Republican ticket.

A Green Bay Packers football fanatic, Ryan often makes reference to his Midwestern roots and how he prioritizes spending time in Wisconsin with his wife, Janna Little, a tax attorney, and their three young children.

Ryan is also a fitness buff — his father and grandfather both died of heart attacks in their 50s — and leads his fellow lawmakers in what has been described as a grueling daily exercise group.

A nimble debater known for his intellectual heft, Ryan has frequently made television appearances in recent years trying to advance his goals of reining in spending on expensive government programs, such as food stamps for the poor and the Medicare health entitlement for the elderly.

Ryan has also pledged to fight for a vigorous defense budget while also slashing taxes.

But Democrats were quick to hit Ryan hard following the announcement on Saturday that he was Romney’s vice presidential pick, arguing that the Wisconsin congressman would simply place the burden of deficit reduction on those who could least bear it — the poor and elderly — while cutting taxes for the rich.

President Barack Obama’s campaign criticized the budget blueprints Ryan has authored, particularly his recommendations to fundamentally remake Medicare, the national health insurance program for Americans age 65 and older, and cut $5.3-trillion in government spending over the coming decade.

“The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education,” Jim Messina, the president’s campaign manager, said in a written statement.

Ryan is a step up from Romney, but that’s not saying much. It might help him win the election, but no one’s excited about Romney

Democrats’ attacks last year, including a television ad showing a Ryan look-alike pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff, seemed to resonate with voters.

But Ryan, who in the past has named conservative economist Milton Friedman, supply-side icon and former Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp and pro-capitalist philosopher Ayn Rand as heroes, won respect from many corners.

Even some Democratic aides in Congress have said they admired his grasp of complicated fiscal issues and his sincerity in attacking problems that had contributed to a mountain of government debt.

Obama has commended Ryan for his serious approach to budgeting, while attacking the specific proposals.

Respected budget experts in Congress also hold him in high regard. “He is the single politician, in the face of … people sweeping the issue under the carpet, who was willing to get specific” on deficit cutting, Maya MacGuineas, head of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told Reuters early last year.

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Ryan also has tried to show a pragmatic side, continually noting that both Democrats and Republicans have been at fault in creating a fiscal mess in the world’s largest economy — and that both would have to find solutions.

A vice president is expected to provide counsel and leadership on issues much broader than the U.S. budget, however, and there is little in Ryan’s background that gives him a deep grounding in foreign policy, military affairs or business.

His stump speeches sometimes note the need for a strong U.S. defense and his budget plans would maintain or even grow already robust Pentagon spending.

His congressional website devotes little to foreign policy issues, mainly embracing core Republican beliefs in America’s need to defend Israel, while expressing concerns that Obama’s planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan “has the potential to pose security threats to soldiers” still there “as well as to compromise the larger mission in Afghanistan.”

Unlike some Republicans, however, he refrained from criticizing the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and winding down a war that added hundreds of billions of dollars to budget deficits.

While Ryan’s budgets have stirred Democratic opposition, they also have drawn some discontent from House conservatives, who want a much faster draw-down of deficits.

Even though activists from the conservative Tea Party movement on Saturday were applauding Romney’s choice, some have ridiculed Ryan’s budget blueprint, which acknowledges it would take nearly three decades to erase deficits.

Ironically, as Ryan’s political star has risen — there were even calls early last year for him to run for president in 2012 — his profile in Congress has been less visible lately.

When navigating the halls of Congress, Ryan almost always is seen listening to music through ear buds, making it easier to breeze past reporters.

He was largely absent from the big fiscal debates of 2011 – from Republicans’ showdown last summer with Obama over a deficit-reduction plan, to the failed “super committee” effort to find an additional $1.2-trillion in savings, and the Republicans’ disastrous fight with Obama over extending a payroll tax cut.

That led one Republican congressional aide to observe that Ryan had “taken the safe route to preserve his conservative credentials” by focusing on theoretical budget proposals and avoiding the tough fights in Congress.

That aide and others also noted earlier this week that Ryan has failed to reach out to Democrats, instead writing budgets that get little bipartisan support.

But the freshly-minted vice presidential candidate touted a record on Saturday that he said was marked by “getting things done in Congress” — accomplishments that he said would compliment “Governor Romney’s executive and private sector success outside of Washington.”

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